TESTIMONY
Paul R. Portney
President, Resources for the Future
before the
U.S. House of Representatives
Committee on Government Reform
Subcommittee on Energy Policy Natural Resources and Regulatory Affairs
June 6, 2003
Mr. Chairman and distinguished members, thank you very much for inviting me
here to testify before you this morning on H.R. 37 and H.R. 2138, bills that pertain to the
elevation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to cabinet status. I am Paul R.
Portney, president of Resources for the Future (RFF), a research organization that
concerns itself with natural resources and the environment. Let me make clear from the
outset that RFF takes no institutional positions on legislative or regulatory matters. The
views I will express this morning are mine alone.
Like many of those who have testified before this subcommittee over the last two
years, I have had a long interest—31 years, in fact—in the substance of U.S.
environmental policy and the way our government is organized to provide environmental
protection. Also like many of those who have testified, I am enthusiastic about
legislation that would elevate the Environmental Protection Agency to cabinet status. As
you and many previous witnesses have pointed out, Mr. Chairman, the United States is
one of a very small number of countries (nine at last count) in which the chief
environmental official is not a cabinet member. While I do not expect it to be an easy
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task, it is past time to for our country to change this situation and make EPA a cabinet
department.
Let me be clear in saying that such a change would not give EPA any additional
legal powers it now lacks, nor would it constrain EPA in any meaningful way, either.
Rather, the importance of such a move would be principally symbolic. But symbols
matter. In international environmental negotiations, the secretary of environmental
protection would be dealing on even footing with the environment ministers (secretaries)
from other nations. Having cabinet status would make these dealings easier for the
secretary, and it would be a signal to the rest of the world that we take the environment
every bit as seriously as they do. Indeed, other than the great bureaucratic inertia that
often stops organizations (whether public or private) from taking obvious steps, I cannot
think of a single good reason why any one would oppose the creation of the Department
of Environmental Protection.
Let me say a brief word about the organizational structure envisioned in H.R.
2138, before I turn my attention to the proposed Bureau of Environmental Statistics—
which I regard as the most exciting part of the proposed legislation. Under the current
wording in Section 7(g)(1) of H.R. 2138, the chief financial officer of the Department of
Environmental Protection would be given the responsibility of “ensuring that the budget,
human resources and regulatory costs imposed by the department accurately reflect
environmental and human health risks.” While it is critically important that someone at
the department perform that function, it strikes me as a policy responsibility that is better
left to the undersecretary for policy, planning, and innovation. I would fully expect that
the chief financial officer would be so absorbed with budget, contracting, grant
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management and other purely financial responsibilities that she/he would not be the best
person to assure that the department’s budget and risk management priorities were in
proper alignment. I regard this as an easy thing to fix, but wish to bring it up because I
think it is an important fix to make.
Turning to the proposed Bureau of Environmental Statistics (or BES), I could
hardly be more enthusiastic, though this will not be surprising. While there have been
many calls over the years for better environmental data collection and dissemination to
elected officials and the public, I believe I was the first to call (in an article I wrote in
1988) for the creation of a BES. I felt then, as I do now, that the creation of such a
bureau would have a number of favorable effects. It would create an imperative that
would almost immediately begin improving the quality of this nation’s environmental
data; it would better inform our elected officials in Congress and in the administration
(including those at the Department of Environmental Protection itself) as to
environmental conditions and trends; it would elevate considerably the quality of policy
debates about which environmental programs are working and which are not; it would
improve our ability to compare the benefits and costs of both current and prospective
environmental programs; and it would do much more.
If a BES is created within the EPA, preferably as part of the elevation of the EPA
to cabinet status, but even if not, I believe the bureau should have the same quasiindependent status as the Bureau of Labor Statistics enjoys within the Department of
Labor or the Bureau of Economic Analysis has within the Commerce Department. That
is, ideally the director of the BES should be appointed by the president for a fixed term
(H.R. 2138 envisions a four-year term, though I might prefer a slightly longer one), one
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that the director should be able to complete even if the president who appoints him or her
is no longer in office. Moreover, ideally the director should be someone with a
reputation for independence and experience in matters related to environmental data
collection and dissemination. It is essential that the director not be seen as someone who
might slant the presentation of environmental data for political purposes.
As the members of this subcommittee are aware, there are a number of difficult
questions that would have to be answered once the proposed bureau began its work. One
has to do with the types of data it would be required to collect and make available to
policymakers and the public in its annual reports. If I might, I’d like to raise a word of
caution with respect to the language in Section 8 (c)(1)(A) and subsequent sections of the
bill dealing with the information the BES will collect. There the director is charged with
“collecting, compiling, analyzing and publishing a comprehensive set of environmental
quality and related public health, economic, and statistical data…”
I understand full well the reasons for suggesting that the bureau go beyond the
collection and dissemination of data on environmental quality. After all, we care about
environmental quality at least in part because it bears on public health, and also because
pursuing it sometimes entails unpleasant economic tradeoffs. Nevertheless, we should
keep in mind the challenge the bureau will face merely deciding upon a set of agreedupon environmental measures to present. For instance, would “tons of solid waste
produced annually” be considered a relevant measure? How about estimates of pollutant
emissions, as opposed, say, to ambient concentrations of these same pollutants in either
our air or our water? Should the bureau present data on forested acreage in the United
States? What about tons of fish caught, or the number of acres under grazing? Many
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other questions could be asked about possible measures just within the environmental
ambit.
Because it will be a great challenge for the bureau to reach agreement on
environmental quality measures alone, I would prefer to see its attention focused there. If
it must also wrestle with more traditional public health measures, or measures of
economic performance, I fear that the bureau’s attention could be spread too thinly and
also that its mandate will begin to infringe upon that of the BEA or the National Center
for Health Statistics. For that reason, I would urge you to think carefully about the types
of information that you would ask the bureau to collect, compile, analyze, and publish.
We would not want to let the “best be the enemy of the good” in this case.
Mr. Chairman, thank you again for allowing me to appear before you today to
discuss this important legislation. I would be happy to answer any questions that you or
your colleagues have.